In the construction of balsa wood models, there has always been a need for accurate cutting of strips of wood to produce precise models. It is important to not only cut the wood to a precise dimension, but also to do so in an expeditious manner, as well as to do so reproducibly. Wood cut by hand exhibits certain disadvantages such as nonuniform cuts and uncontrolled side angles, while machines which were previously used to perform this task have been difficult to adjust and difficult to use.
The length of a manufactured balsa wood strip should be governed by the sheet size of the balsa, not the length of the straight edge or the size of the machine used to aid the model maker in making cuts. Many prior art methods and machines were constructed such that the machine dictated the length of strip.
Certain prior art machines have included a trough or channel to receive the balsa wood while the operator forced it against a cutting edge. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,310,604 and 2,423,807 issued to Zindrick disclosed machines which receive the balsa wood through a channel in two manners, (1) laying down or (2) standing up on its edge, respectively. The recited channels each have rough adjustments to regulate the size of the strips. These adjustments are inadequate for producing precise wooden models.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,175,599 issued to Dubois discloses a wood strip cutting device having a plurality of parallel channels of varying depths connected together side by side with a cutter disposed above the channels and means for holding the cutter across the channels at an angle with respect to the channels so that wood which is slid along a selected channel will be cut by the cutter. The wood will be guided both in its approach to the cutter and after it has passed through the cutter. The Dubois invention resorts to providing a plurality of channels to avoid adjustments of the cutter when varying strip sizes are desired. Rather, instead of adjusting the stripper, the channel having the desired depth is selected and used to make the strip.
There are essentially two major problems with the prior art designs:
(1) The adjustment for the strip size is too crude, resulting in nonreproducible cuts, and
(2) The means for holding the wood in place as it is being drawn through the channel is insufficient to accurately guide the wood during the cutting operation.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a balsa wood stripper having a greater degree of freedom in adjusting the size of the strip to be manufactured. It is another object of this invention to provide a machine which will support the wood before and after it is cut as well as during the cutting.